Week 4: Madison and Beyond
Upon finishing our second week in Wisconsin is is impressive how much we have learned about this state through working directly with students on the ground. This week we were stationed around Madison, the capitol of Wisconsin. The city has a different energy than Milwaukee, a liberal enclave that could almost compare to Boulder, CO- but replace the mountains with lakes.
Our week ended at a school in a town an hour north of Madison, called Mauston. This has been the most rural location the bus has visited so far and we were not sure what to expect from the students. For many students, this was their first encounter viewing photographs documenting the lives of communities across Sub-saharan Africa. We spent some time exploring what the definition of a "village' means population wise, using Mauston (approximately 4,000) as a comparison to Bonsaaso, Ghana (approximately 30,000).
For most young adults they are inundated with so many images a day that sometimes the exhibit can feel overwhelming given how many photographs are in it. Recently, we have taken a new approach of spending at least 10 minutes analyzing one photograph and seeing where the conversation goes. The students of Mauston naturally gravitated towards images of the family owned farms and an interesting conversation was ignited in reaction to Ed Kashi's image of cocoa bean farmers in Ghana. Many students immediately created connections to this image from their own lives growing up on a family farm. Students shared about their family's struggles to keep the farm profitable in response to the growing amount of commercial farms appearing in their community. Mauston is one of the several towns that show the ripple effects of commercial farming and Monsanto led initiatives that have implicated their small community. Ironically, Mauston High School recently received a $25,000 grant from Monsanto to embrace STEM education initiatives in the school.
We are wrapping up our time in Wisconsin during an incredibly important election for this state. It has been exciting to be in a swing state during the two week build up to election day. A gentle reminder of our liberal bubble in New York and how politically oriented conversations are not as black and white here. While some of these neighborhoods do not feel racially diverse, there is certainly political diversity. A new type of sensitivity and awareness comes with this territory and the language and points we discuss are more carefully discussed. In short, the goal of an educator is to teach critical and independent thinking and hopefully our visits have inspired some of that.